The biggest finger-pointing in the slow death of solar in Arizona revolves around a fight between industry segments and utilities. It’s a long-simmering feud that features the marriage of two industries that once competed for the same group of customers.

Last year it boiled over with solar installers — fronted primarily by Tell Utilities Solar Won’t Be Killed, or TUSK — fighting a very public, divisive battle with Arizona Public Service Co.

TUSK officials say APS is killing rooftop solar. It’s something many installers believed in the past, but they did not speak about it publicly because utilities controlled incentives — which for several years was the industry’s lifeblood. But those incentives are gone now, and the fight between installers and utilities has raged on.

“Because utilities have no control over (rooftop solar), they don’t like it,” said Barry Goldwater Jr., co-chairman of TUSK, who added he doesn’t have rooftop solar because his Phoenix roof is too small. “They don’t like competition.”

APS counters that it added solar at a quicker pace than state renewable energy standards require, and it can provide 30 percent of its energy from solar, said Barbara Lockwood, general manager of regulatory affairs and compliance for the state’s largest utility.

Roughly 25,000 customers have rooftop solar within APS’ territory, and there is enough solar power in its system to serve more than 185,000 homes, she said.

“APS is totally and completely pro-solar, and our track record proves that,” Lockwood said. “We have done more to bring solar to the forefront. We are leaders in the nation.”

Through much of the recent fight, Salt River Project has kept a low profile. It reported a slight increase in installations in January compared with last year, but overall installations have remained steady, said Tom Cooper, SRP’s director of resource planning.

SRP is ahead of schedule to meet its sustainable portfolio goals, which the company set internally because it is not bound by the state mandate to get 15 percent of its power from renewable sources by 2025. Cooper said SRP does “not have a current need for additional renewable energy projects, including solar.”

Court Rich, a partner with Rose Law Group PC who represents SolarCity Corp., the largest rooftop installer in the country, said debates about net metering — the method by which solar customers are credited on their bills for creating excess energy — created a year of uncertainty that resulted in Arizona becoming the first state in the country to tax rooftop solar.

“It’s APS’ goal to kill rooftop solar,” Rich said. “Their actions have made it clear that’s what they want to do. It’s what you see in a monopoly: They try to fight whatever change is in their way.”

Harvey Bryan, an Arizona State University professor in the School of Sustainability, said APS is not “happy” with distributed solar on rooftop and small commercial because “they don’t own it, and they see it as a problem.”

“They seem to be throwing up a lot of issues,” he said. “It says to me they really don’t see the same future that people in the renewable community see as a hybrid community, where we all work together in a big system.”